


love is a kind of emptiness

by cedarmoons



Series: can't sleep love [2]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Fisting, Dream Sex, Female Apprentice, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 05:18:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16278455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarmoons/pseuds/cedarmoons
Summary: He wants her nestled under his skin; he wants her in his soul. It’s where she’s always belonged.





	love is a kind of emptiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nighty_nyquil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nighty_nyquil/gifts).



> Written for rags (@vide0-nasties on tumblr) for a fic trade on tumblr. Featuring Asra and her apprentice, Eustacia, whom I love Very Much. heavily references her oneshot [if you were an ocean, i'd learn to float](https://vide0-nasties.tumblr.com/post/168386391512/if-you-were-an-ocean-id-learn-to-float). spoilers for book 13 death if ur new

Asra smells petrichor as thunder rumbles outside the store. It’s enough to make the windows rattle in their panes; he watches a few droplets of rain run down the glass, coalescing into a large, trembling bubble that bursts and runs like its own crystalline vein. When he touches it, the glass is warm to the touch, and he smells apple blossoms on the wind.

And that… that is how he knows this world is a dream-world, constructed from the recesses of his mind. He had spent too much time under the willow tree today, the planes of his shoulder blades concealing her name scratched ragged and harsh into the bark.

And now, in his bed, his mind punishes _(rewards)_ his longing.

The door opens, and his breath catches in his throat, somewhere between lungs and lips, unable to escape. Chest tight, he turns around, hand fisting in the purple star-striped sash she’d placed over the display case. And yes, there she is, just as he remembers—water sluicing off of her hat and her coat and her boots, pooling in a dark reflective puddle in the warped wood. The gust that carries her in zephyrine brings with it the scent of apple blossoms and he  _cannot breathe._

He remembers what he’d done, the day this had happened. He remembers all of it.

“Euffie,” he breathes.

Her wide mouth splits, curls, crinkles into a grin he knows and remembers and  _adores adores adores,_ her gold-capped canines catching the light and black eyes gleaming. He wants to run to her, jump into her arms and nuzzle her chilled skin as he had in the memory this dream is trying to replicate, warm her with his hands and mouth and body—

Fuck, he misses her so much.

So much.

The dream doesn’t falter because he doesn’t play along; since he does not run into her arms, does not make her stagger outside to catch him and spin him in the rain, her dream-vision merely closes the door and grins at him, tossing off her hat and shrugging off her coat, a wicked gleam in her eye he knows well.

“What,” she says, voice low and rough and teasing and just as he remembers. “Did you worry that I forgot whose hands I left my heart in?”

Fuck.  _Fuck._

His heart  _hurts_ —he misses her so much.

“I’m so close,” he says, clearing his throat to keep his voice from breaking. “Euffie, I’m  _so_ close. I’m sorry, you have to wait just a little longer.”

He doesn’t look away from her. If he looks away, he’s terrified that the dream will spiral away into darkness, or worse, sand and ash. His dreams of her are already growing less and less frequent.

(More dreams than not, of late, have gotten some part of her wrong: the exact tilt of her smile or cadence of her voice, the exact shape of her tattoos, the difference between her real and glass eyes—all subtle and yet all screaming wrong- _wrong._  He hopes,  _prays_  this isn’t one of those dreams.)

(He doesn’t want to think of what it means, that her details and beauties are slipping away the longer she’s gone, that he is forgetting the smallest and thus most important things.)

“Wait a little longer?” Euffie repeats, swaying forward on her pointed boots, one eyebrow arched in curiosity as she sets her bag down and leans against the display, hip cocked. “Why, Rah, I’ve been waiting for you for months.”

“I know,” Asra whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Her dream-vision’s eyes narrow, trying to remember her—trying to find words never spoken, and slot them into the right places, all to mimic her as perfectly as it can. Asra takes pity on her; he nods toward the bag. “What’s in the pack?” he asks, allowing a smile to curl his lips.

The dream-vision becomes Eustacia once more. “I wanted to surprise you with surprises,” she purrs, and he plays along, repeating his lines exactly as he did the day this truly happened. He wraps his arms around her, kisses her just to feel (remember) the pressure of her lips, matches her teasing tit-for-tat and hopes his smiles don’t look too hollow.

The dream follows the narrow road of memory, treading familiar ground until he is in her robe, damp and sweet-smelling from the bath, and holding the glass cock she’d bought just for him. He looks up and there she is, towel wrapped short-short around her, water trickling from her hair down her nape, down her collar and shoulders, down between her breasts. She is dewy, glowing, the gold and abalone in her ears glittering in the light, the ink on her body multicolored and shifting, as if it can’t quite decide on the right shade.

He knows his line well— _please, tell me this is for me?_

And her response:  _No, sorry. That’s for the other white-haired magician in my life._

But his mouth is dry. He sets the glass cock aside and stands, the bed groaning in his absence. Her dream-memory waits for his line, as an actor waits for their cue offstage, but he has played out this script too often in his memories, and he misses her so much, and he is starting to forget—

His hands tremble when he reaches for her hands, gently lifting them away from her body so the towel falls to the floor. She is silent, watching him with one eye gleaming, and Asra stares at the buttresses of her collarbones, taut under pale stretched skin riddled with goosebumps from the chill, because he cannot bring himself to meet her gaze.

That snake across her shoulder—how much of it had been black, and green, and green-black?

He lowers his gaze, eyes tracing over her body as he remembers—she does nothing as he cups her breasts in his palms, thumbs flicking over and playing with the golden studs in her nipples ( _she’d shiver,_  he thinks, and she shivers on cue, flashing him a sly, curling smile immediately after), as his hands roam her body to rest on her waist, thumb pressing against the scar that had never changed from angry pink to match the rest of her body.

She is covered in scars, a separate network than that of the ink that covers her body, but this one—a sickle-shaped curve over her waist, down under her belly, where she had lain in the grass a continent away, the water bearing her reflection clouded red with her blood, and told him to trust her. This one is the worst to look at, because he had thought she was really, truly going to die.

His exhale shakes. Under his silent scrutiny, she begins to fidget, one hand lifting to play with the pendant that hangs around his neck. Asra looks at her, and she smirks at him, lifting the pendant to her mouth to suck on it. He hears the small clinks as her tongue stud collides with the crystal.

“Had your fill of me?” she asks, sly and impatient for the play to continue.

“Never,” he replies, letting her pull him close, hands crumpling silk. He grips her hips, lowers his head to suck on a nipple, tongue toying with the piercing. She gasps, one tattooed hand snaking up into his hair and gripping tight, nails digging into scalp.

“You’re awful,” she accuses in her smokiest voice, without any heat. Her back arches and he gently takes her nipple between his teeth, tugging at areola and piercing both. “Your sweetness will rot my teeth.”

“Mm, if you don’t want me sweet, I can be other things,” he murmurs, tasting the lotion that she’d rubbed into her skin, the bathwater that clings to the arcane symbols inked into her sternum. The taste of her magic makes his teeth tingle.

Eustacia laughs, a dry-vowelled chuckle _(fuck, he’d forgotten her laugh—she has so many, so many, he’d forgotten this one, how could he have forgotten?)_ and tips her head back, letting him trace the winding lines up her neck with his tongue. He holds her hips steady with one hand, pressing the other between her thighs, cupping her heat.

When he kisses her, finally, her gold-capped teeth nip at his lower lip, and he misses her so much it steals his breath. She walks him back onto the bed and he falls willingly, breath hitching when she straddles him and parts his robe, leaving him displayed and open beneath her.

“Why, beautiful,” she breathes, pinching a nipple and making him gasp, “aren’t you a  _sight_.”

“I want you, I—I  _need_ — _please,_  Euffie, I need you so much,” he babbles, the dam that had kept him silent and introspective breaking apart under the rush of his longing. It doesn’t even matter that it’s not really her, that she’s a dream-thought crafted from the iridescent mist of memory. It’s been  _months_  and her ashes are still in his system, absorbed into his body when his nails had broken and his blood had run down his fingers—

“Rah,” Eustacia says, and he blinks at her. She shifts, features softening as she looks down at him, touching his cheek hesitantly. He hadn’t expected the touch to ground him, but he does, nuzzling into her fingers and looking up at her through his lashes. Her gaze goes flat, like she’s thinking back to something, and then she says, “You’ve gone a little ways away from me, heartsweet. Won’t you come back?”

Another line, taken from a different memory, but it warms him nonetheless. His exhale shakes, and she plays with his necklace, fidgeting above him until he puts his hands on her waist and she stills. Holding her gaze, he rocks her against him, not bothering to stifle his groans. He watched through hooded eyes as the concern in her eye fades, as her capped canines catch the light under her smile.

“I’m here,” he manages.

“Excellent. I’d much rather see you well-fucked than grieving, you know.”

He laughs, despite himself, ignoring the burr-vowelled roughness of it. “Euffie, I  _really_  want you to fuck me.”

“Oh, is that  _so_?” she asks, delighted and dark-eyed and beautiful. She grinds against him, already wet. It doesn’t take long before he is hard between her legs and she is pulling gasps from the well of his throat, as easily as one draws up water.

“That is indeed an excellent thing, for I was thinking,” she pants, and when his fingers dig into her hips she grabs his wrists without a pause, pinning them to the mattress beside his head.  _Fuck_ , he thinks, halfway to delirious already, pleasure runs needlelike up his spine as his cock throbs between her legs and his toes curl. 

She feels it too, lips curling in a mischievous, wicked grin. “I was  _thinking,_ ” she says again, “of how much I would like to tie you up with my thread— _maybe_  a blindfold, too. Watch you dance on my fingers, hm?”

“No blindfold,” he gasps, hips lifting against the downward grind of her hips. “Wanna—wanna  _see_  you. But yeah, tie me up,” and the moment the words are out of his mouth she has summoned her cosmic thread, binding his hands together, stretching them out above his head to connect to the ebony headboard of the bed he hasn’t slept in in months. Asra groans, swallowing hard, and continues, “Please, Euffie— _Euffie,_  I want you to fuck me, I wanna feel you when I wake up.”

Euffie’s good black eye somehow darkens, her eyes lidding as she looks down at him, a sly grin curling her mouth, so achingly familiar. Gods, he loves her, he wishes  _I love you_  had been his last words to her instead of—

“That,” she purrs, rocking against him until he groans, _“that_ can be done.”

 _“Please,”_ he says, desperate and missing her something foolish. “Please, I—I want—”

“How can I refuse, when you ask so sweetly?” Euffie teases. She scoots backward, and he swallows his keen, closing his eyes when she moves his legs, spreading him open before her. The dream-logic supplies the oil— _coconut_ , he thinks, another prop used for the play—and when she presses her fingers against his hole his head falls back to the pillow as a shudder runs through him.

“That’s it,” she croons, bending over him, “that’s it, beautiful, you’re right here with me, oh,  _look at you_. Rah, if you could  _see_ yourself.”

Heart hammering under his breast, he closes his eyes to concentrate on  _feeling_. He focuses on the sensation of her finger inside him, massaging in circles, and soon his breath is coming in pants, as he writhes and bucks to take her deeper. He feels her breath hot on his neck, feels the stud against his skin as she drags her tongue down his throat, to suck a bruise into his collarbone. He doesn’t feel any pain, only pleasure.

“Yes,” he hisses, _“yes, Euffie_ , mark me, I wanna—”

He wants to touch her—he wants to taste her,  _devour_  her, wants her thighs framing his face as she rocks against him—she’d always joked about snapping his neck if she ever rode his face, and he’d never been able to convince her to do it but—but here, he could, he could—

“I  _could_  do that,” Euffie purrs, as she adds her third finger, and he groans at the stretch, eyes flying open to see her looking down at him. Witnessing her hunger—her ravenousness—is a thrill, heat bolting down his spine to tighten in his core. Asra bites his lip before his lips fall slack, unable to stop his moan as her fingers curl against his prostate. He can’t help the helpless buck of his hips, trying to taking her deeper.

“But I thought you wanted something else. Was I wrong?” she asks him, and he can’t answer, the words lodged in his throat as she begins to fuck him with her fingers. The bed is rocking, thumping against the wall as he grinds against her hand. He gasps when she massages his prostate, eyes rolling back at the sensation. It’s good, it’s  _so_  good, but he wants—

He wants—

(He wants her nestled under his skin; he wants her in his soul. It’s where she’s always belonged.)

“More,” he says, strangled.

She kisses him, light and teasing, and he blooms for her, panting against her lips as she works him until he is dancing for her, just as she’d wanted, hips bucking and back arching and toes curling as he chases his pleasure.

She has four fingers inside of him when she finally takes his cock in her other hand, dragging it up his length in long, slow pumps that make him twitch and gasp. He bites his lip hard enough to draw blood, twisting at the golden ethereal thread that binds him, his eyes rolling back when she spreads her four fingers and then bears down on his prostate. The pleasure is a relentless wave, submerging him; he  _whines_ , bucking against her, fucking himself on her fingers as the pleasure coils and knots and his cock  _throbs_ —

 _“Cuh—close,”_ he gasps, out of pure memory, pure  _habit_. She stills at once, and though he  _knows_  that’s what she would do, what she always does, he can’t stop his shout, can’t keep himself from grinding down on her fingers, can’t silence his whimpers and wordless, open-vowelled pleas.

The drag of her fingers inside him, so slow he wonders if it could count as torture, is so delicious it is  _almost_  enough to make him come. He feels his cock twitch against his stomach, feels his own precome smeared on his stomach as his abdomen jumps and his chest heaves, lungs straining for breath.

She grins down at him, utterly pleased with him and herself both, and tears prick his eyes at the sight.

He licks dry, cracked lips as she slowly,  _slowly_ begins to pull her fingers from him, until all that is left inside him are the tips of her three longest fingers, lighting fire at the ends of his nerves. She hums, then withdraws her hand completely, leaving him terribly,  _achingly_  empty—and he is shameless when he lifts his hips to chase after her, begs,  _“Eustacia!”_

“I’m enjoying myself,” she says, soothingly, the hand that hadn’t been in his ass pressing against his throat, thumb flush against his pulsepoint, measuring how his heartbeat runs like a panicked hare. “Are you, Rah?”

Asra nods, on the brink of delirium, and as he begins to come back, to settle once more in his sweatslick, quivering body. “I want more,” he croaks, finally, as she is running her hand up his bare shaven-smooth thigh and pressing kisses to the skin that stretches over his heart. “ _Please_ , Euffie, more.”

“More?” she croons. “Do you want my cock in you? Or—” she hesitates, undoubtedly rifling through his memories, searching for words that her muse had once spoken whether months or years or lifetimes ago, “something else?”

“Your fingers,” Asra pants, “I want your hand in me, if you can—I want  _you_ , I want—”

 _I want you back,_ he thinks, and his throat closes.

“Oh,  _Rah,”_ she rasps, and kisses him.

He gasps against her lips when she sinks three fingers inside him straight to the knuckle, tips crooking, and that is almost,  _almost_  enough. But he catches it, reigning himself back, arching his neck and pleading with her until she obliges him, until she is kneeling by his side and her breasts sway over him, rocking in time with the clench of her muscles as she works her ring finger, her fourth, into him.

Asra opens his mouth, lifts his head, and draws the peak of her breast into his mouth, smiling when he hears her curse, tongue circling her nipple and the barbell piercing both. She rewards him with speed, bracing herself against the headboard with her other hand, the wet sounds of the oil squelching as she pumps her four fingers into him, and he releases her sensitive, peaked nipple with a gasp when he feels her fifth finger—her pinky—press against his already stretched rim.

“Think you can take me?” she asks, and though he hears the sly teasing seduction in her tone, he also hears the worry, and when he takes a few moments to breathe instead of answer, she kisses his sweaty forehead, brushing back his hair out of his eyes. “Cottontail?”

“Yes,” he croaks, lips still flush against the underside of her breast. He moans when the slow thrust of her fingers drag against his prostate. “Fuck. Yes, give me everything,  _please_ , ff _fuh—fuck—_ ”

She obliges him, and he wants to  _scream_ , it’s so good. His moans are echoing, now, loud enough to carry through the entire house and bounce back to them. The blankets are tangled at the end of the bed, the sheets crumpled and damp from their own sweat. Her whole body is shining with her sweat, gleaming like some kind of god—his is, too, gleaming with sweat and oil and his own leaking spend—and wildly he remembers telling Ilya ( _when_? he can’t remember, mind too blank with pleasure) that loving Eustacia was like loving a god.

His mind is slipping from his grasp, and isn’t madness what happens when you dare to love a god?

She fits her pinky inside him with a satisfied hum, kissing his forehead again as she praises him in a low butter-smooth voice she uses only for sex, and all he can think to do is try to ride her fingers and suck on her nipple, worry at it with his teeth until she moans. She’s straddling his thigh, now, slowly grinding against it as Asra worships underneath her.

 _Yes,_  he thinks, wildly, desperately,  _use me, please, you’re everything._

“One more,” she warns, “and if you want to stop—”

“Don’t,” he croaks,  _whines_ , head falling back to the pillows, “don’t wanna s-stop—give it to me, Euffie, I  _want_  it—”

She presses her thumb to his rim, and he clenches down around her fingers, gasping as he stutters out  _close_  and her almost-fist stops moving entirely. He doesn’t have the breath to protest, can only feebly try to fuck himself on her fingers until she clicks her tongue and presses down on his hips, holding him still.

“Look at you,” she says, “gods, you’re so  _fucking beautiful,_ Asra, so damned beautiful I don’t know what to do with myself sometimes.”

He’s weak and shaking, his breaths sputtering out as almost-but-not-quite sobs, and Eustacia hums as she takes his cock in hand, fingers curling tight around the base, with  _just_ enough pressure to stave off his release. “Euffie,” he croaks, voice choked and raw, “Euffie, Euffie…”

Eustacia climbs off of his thigh, releases his cock—it bobs against his stomach, red and leaking, the pressure deliciously painful; she soothes his whimper with a kiss to his jumping abdomen—and lifts his legs, positioning and tying him until he is left splayed open and almost bent in half before her, his thighs bound to the mattress with a golden thread.

“Beautiful,” she names him, and his sob catches in his throat. “I’m ready, Rah. Are you?”

He can only nod, delirious with pleasure, the only syllables he knows being  _yes_ and the ones that make up her name. He swallows thickly, lifting his hips up from where she’s rested him on her thighs, knees sticking to the small of his back. She chuckles, low and full-throated, and offers him her clean fingers to suck on as she presses her thumb, again, to his stretched, stuffed-full hole.

He sucks on her fingers like it’s one of her glass cocks, closing his eyes and moaning as the tip breaches him. She praises him as he strains for her, as he clenches down and tries to relax and open for her, tries to let her in. In the waking world, this would have been impossible, no matter the amount of oil they’d used or preparation work they’d done, and here, in this beautiful dream where a ghost is trying her best to be Eustacia, to please him, it is almost too much.

He gasps around her fingers when he takes her, eyes rolling back as her hand sinks into him to the wrist. Her fingers slide from his slack mouth, and distantly he is aware of her smearing his saliva over his throat, purring about his beauty, but all he can focus on is how she is slowly curling her hand into a fist, how the curves and angles of her fingers drag against the sweetest places inside him. He feels so full he can’t even think.

She kisses his stomach when her fist is inside him, licking out at the small puddle of spend that has collected on his stomach, and grins up at him. He grins back, puffing and flushed and coiled tense in anticipation.

“How do you feel?” she asks him. “You’re alright?”

He tugs at the thread that binds his wrists to the headboard, and she waits for him to answer her, eyes dark and brimming with enough love he thinks his heart would’ve stopped if this was real. Instead, he swallows past the tackiness in his mouth, and says, “Can you… can you untie my hands? Please?”

She does, dispelling the threads with a gesture, and he sits up as far as he can, shivering at how it turns her hand inside him, bracing himself on an elbow as he reaches up, cupping the back of her head and bringing her forward.

They can’t quite come close enough to kiss, dream-logic be damned; Asra braces his forehead against hers, tasting the sweetness of her hot breaths, and doesn’t look away from her eyes once. “Okay,” he says, keeping his eyes open, “I’m ready, I’m ready, give it to me—”

She begins to fuck him with her fist, wrapping her hand around his cock to pump him in time with her thrusts, and in moments he’s back to where he was, incoherent and twitching and on the brink of collapse. She grins at him, cheeks wrinkling, and that sight is enough to make him come with a broken moan, clinging to her, cock throbbing as he spills and spills and spills.

“Look at you,” she says, fucking him through his climax, and though it’s a line she’s oft repeated, the love in her voice is no less warm, no less feigned. Asra’s heart flips at the very sound, and he squeezes his eyes closed, swallowing thickly. 

She lowers him to cool bedsheets that stink of sex, and he only opens his eyes once his breaths do not burn his lungs, once his thighs have stopped their shaking. She sighs, shuffling around until she can lean down and kiss his slack, bitten-raw lips, the curve of his jaw, the moles on his body. “I love you, Asra.”

Asra opens his mouth, and he means to say it back,  _Love you too, Euffie_ , but the words catch in his throat. He stares up at the ceiling instead, still floating and boneless as she begins to carefully pull her fingers from him, and the words that come out are—

“I didn’t mean it,” he says, gasping, tears coursing down his cheeks. He’s boneless and floating, feeling the cool air of a breeze caress his skin even though the windows aren’t open. He’s running out of time. 

He lifts his arms, hiccuping as he reaches for her. “Euffie, I’m so sorry, I never meant—I never wanted—”

Euffie, hands now free, straddles him, cupping his face with her hand, stroking the curve of his cheekbone and wiping away his tears. Sniffling, he looks at her bare shoulder, at the arching buttress of her collarbone under goose-pimpled skin, because he cannot bring himself to meet her black gaze.

The dream supplies the echo of his last words;  _if you want to be foolish, don’t let me stop you! Well, fine, stay here and die, then—_

“I didn’t mean it,” he says again, helpless and hoarse. He squeezes his eyes shut, clinging to her, taking comfort in how the threads dissolve between her touch, how she allows him to wrap himself around her to feel her everywhere,  _everywhere_ , like a spindle around thread.

“Oh,  _Rah_ ,” Eustacia says, rough voice as tender as he’s ever heard it, except maybe the day she’d said her vows in the meadowlands, with baby’s breath braided in her hair. She kisses his parted lips, the corners of his mouth, the curves of his cheeks where his tears are coursing down his face. 

“Heartsweet,” she whispers, “I knew.”

He wakes up.

* * *

He wakes up with his pillowed cheek resting in a puddle of drool, with the front of his nightdress soaked and sticky from his own spend, ass as sore as it’s ever been, and he cannot breathe.

_I knew._

_Fuck,_ he thinks, squeezing his burning eyes shut.  _Fuck, fuck, **fuck**!_

Two words should not ruin a person, and yet,  _and yet—_


End file.
